From the English William had no further trouble; with the neighbouring kingdoms he had still some difficulties. With the Britons in Wales, the old Earls of Mercia and the house of Leofric had had friendly connection; but all sign of this had ceased upon the Conquest. The wars carried on against them were however local in character; for, contrary to his usual practice, William had established upon the West March two palatine counties of Chester and Shrewsbury. In these counties the whole of the land belonged to the earl and his tenants, and the king had no domain. They were, therefore, like the great feudal holdings of France. Chester he at first placed in the hands of Gerbod the Fleming, his stepson, and, upon his withdrawal to the Continent, in those of Hugh of Avranches, surnamed Lupus, a man of whom the chroniclers speak much evil as at once licentious and tyrannical. Together with his lieutenant, Robert of Rhuddlan, he waged continual war with the Welsh. The same task fell to Roger of Montgomery, Earl of Shrewsbury, who took advantage of the disputes among the Welsh Princes, and succeeded so far as to build and hold, far in Wales, the castle of Montgomery, called after his own property in the neighbourhood of Lisieux in Normandy. [Sidenote: Scotland’s savage invasions.] Malcolm Canmore had throughout appeared as the supporter of the conquered English, and at his court the exiles had been constantly received. This did not prevent him from pushing his ravages into the Northern counties; nor did they cease when he received Eadgar Ætheling and his sisters on their flight to the North (1070). This was followed by acts of extraordinary barbarity. Gospatric, who had found favour with William, and accepted the Earldom of Northumberland, attempted a counter invasion into the Scotch district of Cumberland. In rage at this Malcolm gave orders to spare neither sex nor age. The old and the infants were slaughtered, the able-bodied men and maidens were carried off into slavery, so that there were few Scotch villages where there were not English slaves. Malcolm, however, grew milder under the influence of his wife Margaret, Eadgar’s sister, and the effect of the presence of the numerous English, either refugees or slaves, was such that the Lowlands became thoroughly Anglicised. [Sidenote: William makes Malcolm swear fealty. 1072.] In 1072, William himself revenged the inroad of the year 1070, by marching into Scotland and receiving the oath of fealty of Malcolm at Abernethy on the Tay. It is mentioned that the last great noble who had held out against him, Eadric the Wild, accompanied him on this expedition, which marks not only the Conquest of England, but the assumption on the part of William of that Imperial position in Great Britain which the great English kings had held. [Sidenote: Trouble in Normandy. 1075.]